Newspaper Editor Calls for Gun Owners to Be Treated Like Sex Offenders

Of all the dumb ideas that anti-gunners come up with this one has to be near the top of the list. But the paranoia of ignorant anti-protectionists would be laughable if it weren’t also directing the steps of our president.

The editor of the Baltimore Sun Tricia Bishop has come up with her own clever plan to equate being a gun owner with being a sex offender. Apparently in her mind they are equally disturbing even though gun ownership is not only protected by the 2nd amendment but is also one of the biggest deterrents in thwarting the very crimes committed by sex offenders.

I’m less afraid of the criminals wielding guns in Baltimore, I declared as we discussed the issue, than I am by those permitted gun owners. I know how to stay out of the line of Baltimore’s illegal gunfire; I have the luxury of being white and middle class in a largely segregated city that reserves most of its shootings for poor, black neighborhoods overtaken by “the game.” The closest I typically get to the action is feeling the chest-thumping vibrations of the Foxtrot police helicopter flying overhead in pursuit of someone who might be a few streets over, but might as well be a world away. But I don’t know where the legal gun owners are or how to ensure that their children, no matter how well versed in respecting firearms, won’t one day introduce that weapon to my daughter.

And so, as President Barack Obama announced plans this week to tighten background checks for gun buyers and increase gun tracking and research, I thought, that’s all well and good, but how about adding something immediately useful: a gun owner registry available to the public online — something like those for sex offenders. I’m not equating gun owners with predatory perverts, but the model is helpful here; I want a searchable database I can consult to find out whether my kid can have a play date at your house.

There are so many things wrong with these comments we could write 10 posts on a simple rebuttal, but we will leave the comment section below for that and simply write about a few glaring issues with this argument.

Did you notice how Bishop says she is more afraid of law abiding gun owners than she is of the crooks and criminals who carry guns to carry out their crimes? So, this is the frame of mind we are dealing with here. Never mind that more gun deaths take place at the hands of those who illegally own them, but it’s often the law abiding gun owner that is able to stop or deter a crime, as we have reported hundreds of times in our defensive gun use section here.

She thinks that because she only visits “privileged” areas of town in which she never has to worry about any crime whatsoever. Of course we could recount the piles of stories where break-ins have taken place in neighborhoods where bystanders always say the same thing: “It’s such a quiet neighborhood. I never thought anything like this could happen here”. But I hardly think she would listen after making the next comments.

I’m not sure what kind of delusional world one has to live in to think treating gun owners like sex offenders with a “gun registry map” is a good idea. If you only let your kids play at houses where the parents are anti-gun that is your prerogative, but taking away more rights and freedoms from the law abiding does not make you or your kids safer.